THE
LUNAR WAVES HERMETIC SCIENCE INTERVIEW

The following interview with Ed Macan
ran in a translated and slightly edited version in the January 2000 issue
of the Spanish journal Lunar Waves.It appears here in its original form,
in English and unedited.

Interview by Toni Roig.

1.How is
it for a musician to write about music?

I’d put it this way: my work as a
writer is much more influenced by my work as a composer and a musician than my
work as a composer and musician is influenced by my work as a writer.Obviously when I write about music I
draw on insights I’ve gained as a working musician and composer.On the other hand, when I’m writing
music I try to let the music dictate its own logic, without imposing some kind
of ideology or theoretical construct onto it.For me the test of good music is finally whether it sounds
good and whether it coheres—not whether it can be seen to demonstrate
somebody’s critical ideology or whether it conforms to “accepted” theoretical
models, which I think can be a real pitfall for music critics and theorists who
also compose music.I think one
problem with a lot of the modernist classical music of the 50s and 60s is that
it was composed to prove somebody’s theory or demonstrate somebody’s ideology,
with no thought whatsoever to how it actually sounded and whether it
communicated anything emotionally.Obviously by choosing to write instrumental progressive music I’m
addressing a much smaller audience than, say, Puff Daddy or the Backstreet
Boys.But I’m still interested in
fully engaging that audience, and if my music doesn’t express something
meaningful to them on a purely emotional level, then it has failed, no matter
how well it embodies this or that theory or ideology.

2.How did
the idea for Hermetic Science come about in the first place?

3.Why
aren’t you using guitars in your albums?

When
I founded Hermetic Science in late 1995, I was addressing three issues.First and foremost, by the mid 1990s I
had become very concerned about how neo-prog had become more or less the
“accepted” form of new prog, since in my mind by that time neo-prog was no
longer progressive at all.I was
interested in progressive music in the original sense of the word—music that
stretches out, takes chances, explores new stylistic directions—rather than
music that’s “progressive” merely because it recycles the most obvious and
cliched riffs by classic prog bands like Genesis, Yes, ELP, and Pink
Floyd.The neo-prog bands seemed
to feel their music was “modern” simply because they used digital keyboards and
gated drums, and to me this stood the original premise of progressive music on
its head.So my idea with Hermetic
Science was to recapture the original spirit of progressive music:music that pushes back and breaks down
stylistic boundaries, music that creates a utopian synthesis, music that takes
its listeners somewhere new and stretches their comfort zone.Our starting point was earlier
progressive music—instrumental ELP, as well as some of the chamber prog like
Univers Zero—but we went on to draw on ECM jazz, minimalism, fourth world, and
ambient styles that I feel have been sadly ignored by a lot of progressive rock
musicians of the 1980s and 1990s.I still feel our debut album made a real contribution to re-opening the
boundaries between prog and these other styles, a contribution which has yet to
receive its full due.

I
was also concerned that we not replicate the typical guitar-keys-bass-drums
lineup, because in my opinion that particular instrumentation has been bled to
death. In particular, I’m not too
sure a lot more can be done with guitars in a rock context, which is one reason
we don’t have a guitarist.The
other is that I like the trio format—I’d rather have too much open space than
not enough, because it gives not only me but the rhythm section more room to
stretch out, and I was also interested in exploring the possibility of using
the bass guitar as a second lead instrument.Early on I knew we’d be extensively featuring the mallet
percussion instruments.I had
developed a contrapuntal, almost keyboard-like approach to playing vibes and
marimba, whereby I could supply melody and chords or chords and bass line
simultaneously, and by using this approach, I felt the mallet-bass-drums lineup
could carry an entire CD.I think
the debut Hermetic Science CD proves that this lineup was completely viable, although it may perhaps have been just a bit
dogmatic, which is one reason I’m playing more keyboards on Prophesies.

My
final reason for founding Hermetic Science involved my work as a music
educator.I’ve become very
concerned that there is a gap between what we teach music students in the
college classroom and what they encounter in their work as professional
musicians.I wanted to give a
select group of especially talented students experience they might not get
otherwise in terms of letting them see what all is involved in recording and
marketing a CD, setting up gigs, and so on.Ad, of course, I see Hermetic Science as an ideal vehicle
for teaching a new generation of musicians about progressive music in a very
intensive, hands-on way.

4.Before
getting into the music of Hermetic Science, it was a surprise to find that Prophesies opens with a Rush cover
version.Why was that? What do you
think of the music of Rush?

Well,
like a lot of young white American males coming of age in the late 70s, I went
through a period of Rush-mania.I
saw them live during the Moving Pictures
tour, which may well have been the apex of their career, and they were very
impressive.Looking back now, I
don’t hear as much in their music as I used to:now, rather than hearing the unusual meters or instrumental
virtuosity, I’m often struck by the endless repetition of riffs, the
four-square phrase structures, and the rather ordinary chord changes. I also don’t find Neil Peart’s lyrics
nearly as profound as I did in late adolescence.Strangely, for me the most compelling member of Rush was
Alex Lifeson—he had a real flair for creating memorable melodic leads, and I
regretted it when he became a textural rather than a lead player in the early
80s and Rush became a Police sound-alike band.

Still,
I have a fascination with successful trios—I believe the trio format really
stretches the players to their limit, and makes them contribute everything
they’ve got—and there is no question Rush is one of the more successful trios
in rock history.So it was logical
for Hermetic Science to cover something by Rush at some point.I always liked “Jacob’s Ladder” a lot,
as did Andy Durham, our bassist at the time, and as I felt we could
successfully transfer the guitar lines to mallet percussion, we decided to have
a go at it.“Jacob’s Ladder” has a
real structural inevitability to it; I think the modulations from section to
section are interesting, as are the rhythms, the transformations of themes, and
the rise and fall in dynamics.In
short, it’s something I would like to have written myself, so we covered
it.The reason we put “Jacob’s
Ladder” at the beginning of theProphesies CD is simple—after the
“Prophesies” suite it wold have sounded anti-climactic.In some ways, it feels like a direct
continuation of “Mars,” the final track of the debut CD, so maybe there’s also
a good symbolic reason for it being first track.

5.What’s the
compositional method you use for your music? Do you jam with your band mates or
do you have the whole piece in mind?

I
have the whole composition in mind when the band starts learning it.In the early days, with the first
lineup, it was a little looser:I
would come in with the completed vibes (or marimba) part and a skeletal bass
part, then we would develop the drum part and maybe develop the bass part a bit
more.We did that on a piece like
“Fire Over Thule.”When Andy
Durham joined the band on bass, he had this very cutting, Chris Squire-like
bass sound—and he was an excellent reader.It was then I began to see the full potential of the bass as
a second lead instrument, with a continuous counterpoint between bass and the
lead instrument.The first piece
we did that really explored that approach was “Esau’s Burden,” off the debut
CD.But in order to make the more
intricate bass lines work smoothly with the lead instrument, I had to start
scoring the bass lines out more literally than before, although sometimes we
would still change things I had written during the process of the band learning
the music.The fact that the bass
lines were now charted out also demanded a more structured drum approach, although
I’ve never charted out the drum parts: what I do is suggest groove figures I think will work against
particular bass parts, and let the drummer develop those.

Sometimes
when I’m teaching a later lineup of Hermetic Science a piece that was
originally recorded by an earlier lineup, we’ll find a guy isn’t totally
comfortable playing the parts his predecessor played—or maybe I’ll find I hear
my own lead parts differently than I used to.At any rate, some of our live performances of certain pieces
have developed in a rather different direction than our studio recordings.At some point I hope to put out a live
recording showcasing the different Hermetic Science lineups.I think people will be surprised at how
some of the material has evolved and developed from lineup to lineup.

6.It seems
evident that religion is the thematic center of much of Hermetic Science’s
music.Do you consider Hermetic
Science’s music religious music?

Well,
I am a Christian, and while I don’t see my music as a vehicle for preaching or
proselytizing—instrumental music isn’t particularly good for conveying dogma,
at any rate—my music naturally draws from my own perceptions and experiences,
so if some of it has religious sensibility, I guess that’s not surprising.Perhaps what’s most important for me is
the conviction that the most powerful religious music can be used as a vehicle
for transcendence.Some religious
music encourages a kind of communal transcendence—I’m thinking of black gospel
music, for instance—and while that’s wonderful, I see our music as falling into
a different tradition of religious music, that is, music that creates a space
for individual spiritual contemplation.As a Christian, I’ve been especially influenced by music from the
Christian tradition—renaissance choral music and Gregorian chant, obviously—but
there’s no question that there are mid-eastern influences as well in Hermetic
Science’s music.There’s certainly
a ritualistic feel to some of our music.

In
a world that’s so corrupted by cynicism and materialism, and so given to
sensory overload as ours, there’s a real need for music that can create a quiet
space, and maybe give us a glimpse of God, our better selves, and a better
world.People aren’t going to get
that from gangsta rap or grunge! It saddens me, how earthbound and cynical a
lot of contemporary popular music has become.Too much contemporary rap and rock hides its lack of
underlying message or substance beneath a “can you top this” barrage of shock
tactics.

The
Prophesies suite, incidentally, can
be interpreted on several levels:as a paean to the fortitude and integrity of Jeremiah and a meditation
on the responsibilities and burdens of the prophet-figure, as a historical saga
of the fall of Jerusalem, or as a call to repentance and God-consciousness and
parable of spiritual death and rebirth.

7.Is
Hermetic Science a studio project or are you planning to play gigs?

Hermetic
Science has always been a live band.I’m rather proud of the fact that of the eight tracks on our debut CD,
we regularly played seven of them live; only “The Sungazer” was recorded with
no thought for what was feasible in live performance.Likewise, the current lineup will play the first four tracks
on the Prophesies CD as a medley in
our live shows.We face two
difficulties as a live band.The
first is geographical isolation.The metro Eureka area has maybe 80,000 people, and the nearest large
city, San Francisco, is 270 miles away! All prog bands have a limited audience
base, and ours is even more limited because of the isolation and sparse
population of this region.Touring
hasn’t been feasible so far because I tend to teach nearly year around.And when we do play live, we find
ourselves going to a huge effort to play for small audiences—like most prog
bands, we have lots of equipment, and people are always amazed to see how much
space we take up on stage.Currently I make do with vibes, marimba, ARP string ensemble, Micromoog,
and recorder—which, unfortunately, makes it impossible for us to do the second
half of the Prophesies suite live,
since there’s simply no way to pack my Hammond around to shows.So playing gigs is something of a major
production, and we do no more than four to six a year.

8.What is
the “House of Panorama”?

One
night many years ago I had an extremely vivid dream.I found myself in the midst of a vast array of foot soldiers
carrying banners, mounted knights, and so on, who were all milling around a
huge castle.Somehow I was certain
they were dressed in 14th-century armor although I don’t know how I
knew that, since at the time I had no interest whatsoever in things
medieval.I also had no idea what
I was doing in the midst of this throng, so I asked one of the knights what was
going on.He said something to the
effect “we’re on a quest—we seek the House of Panorama.”The I woke up.Somehow I woke up with the impression
they were on an epic quest, like Parsifal for the grail—a story which, at the
time, I didn’t know.I also
understood “House of Panorama” to refer not only to a building, but to a
bloodline, as in Poe’s “House of Usher.”I still don’t know what, if anything, that dream meant.But I was inspired to create a network
of pieces that would give a kind of musical reality to the “House of Panorama.”

9.Can you
tell us something about your ELP book?

My
book will offer an analytical and critical survey of ELP’s music.My approach to the first six albums is
quite in depth, taking a song-by-song approach:readers who are familiar with chapter five of Rocking the Classics will have a very
good idea of what I’m up to here.Later albums will be considered in somewhat less detail, but nothing
will be ignored.

Since
there has never been an ELP biography, my book will also fulfil the role of an
ELP history.There will be one or
more chapters detailing the band’s pre-history, and my discussion of the band’s
albums will be set of chronologically with an account of the band’s other
activities.I think anyone who
reads the book will emerge with a comprehensive understanding of the band’s history.As in Rocking the Classics, I am not interested in dates as trivia, but
in tracing ELP’s rise and fall during the 70s as it relates to progressive rock
in general, to contemporary social and cultural trends, and to the band’s
changing interpersonal dynamics.I
do think that by offering a careful chronological account of the band’s
activities, I will be able to shatter a number of tenacious misconceptions
about their output.

In
some ways, this will be a very different book than Rocking the Classics.I
have not retraced the social, cultural, and musical birth of progressive rock
in any detail, nor spent a lot of time defining the genre’s musical, visual,
and literary parameters.I have
definitely not built and then explained my methodology for analyzing the music
from ground zero, as I felt compelled to do in Rocking the Classics.However, what this book lacks in breadth, I believe it will more than
make up in depth.One frustration
of writing Rocking the Classics was
that I was dealing with so many things at once, I often had to generalize more
than I liked to.Here, that isn’t
necessary.

On
the other hand, there are some topics fromRocking the Classics
that I will explore further.The
issue of critical reception demands further attention:if ever a band’s critical reception
cried out for careful scrutiny, it is ELP’s.There are also a couple of issues raised in the two later
prog studies by Bill Martin and Paul Stump that deserve attention, and so long
as these issues can be addressed in the context of ELP’s music, I plan to do
so.

I
have made considerable progress on this book.I have written seven substantial chapters, which begin with
the band’s formation and first album and take in all their work until (and
including) Welcome Back My Friends.In other words, the heart of the
book has been completed.